AS outspoken persons do, the actress Emma Thompson has spoken out. Her topic was the pressure on actresses to be thin, which she said was “evil”.

Though far from a lardbucket herself, Ms Thompson added that one of the reasons she never moved to Los Angeles was that people there thought her too fat. That is also the main reason why I have never moved to Linlithgow.

Emma T is correct to be outraged, particularly as many, mainly female, actors are making themselves ill through anorexia. The same, of course, happens in the fashion industry.

There, models are thin so that the clothes can hang off them properly. It is a good look for the clothes, but not for the person. No man finds that look sexy. But why actors have to be thin I don’t really know. Perhaps it is to match the script.

At the same time as Ms Thompson’s bombshell observations caused havoc in the Stock Exchange, the world was rocked further on its axis by news that everyone (in the sense of nobody that we know) is doing the DNA diet. This is where your diet is tailored to your genes.

I cannot tell you more than that as I declined to read further than the second paragraph of the official announcement, opting instead to eat a Belgian bun for the simple reason that Belgian buns keep my calls to The Samaritans down to two a day.

Like most decent ratepayers, I do try to watch what I eat but, after a recent period of abstention, found myself ordering in a fish supper, accompanied by a single white pudding and mushy peas.

To be fair to me, prior to this, the Lord had bade me partake of alcohol in immoderate measure, after which one of his angels came down from heaven and spake thus: “Lo, Rab, order in a massive amount of stodge from the chippie.”

Faithfully obeying this divine commandment, I then found myself in a state of blissful meditation, which is to say I conked out on the sofa for two hours.

Woe was me. Feeling fat and on the verge of complaining to the council about the roadworks in my head, I fell back on the wisdom of ancient sages from the 1950s and asked myself (let’s chant it all together now): “What would Sir Harold Macmillan have done?” Good call.

No one was fat in Britland when Sir Harold was Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, which also happened to be the happiest days of my life, aged zero to six. Never had it so good.

The intriguing thing is that everybody back then ate stodgy pudding with custard every single day, after a main course of lumpy things in dark brown gravy, two small potatoes and three sprouts boiled for 45 minutes.

I explain more about this in my forthcoming book (self-published), The Sir Harold Macmillan Diet.

Of course, there was less rubbish around back then.

It is no more easy to picture Sir Harold sitting in a burger joint than it is to think of him jogging down the pavement in his sock-suspenders or to imagine Sir Anthony Eden tweeting: “Have caused a crisis in Suez!!! LOL.”

These were different times. That said, politically at least, I believe progress is being made. Watching Theresa May’s Article 50 proclamation in the Hoose o’ Commons on Wednesday, I noticed there were fewer pot bellies behind her, though the gravity of the occasion was still ruined by a lady who had positioned herself so that the nation could see her ample assets.

She even readjusted them when Mrs May said: “Now is the time to pull together.” Disgraceful behaviour.

However, I have not gathered you here today to indulge in pendulous cogitation.

You are enjoined thus: be neither too thin nor too fat. Eat well but not immodestly. Try to have some lumpy things. And never, ever skip pudding.